This article examines the functional configuration of khithabi (direct speech) verses in the Qur’anic narratives of the Ulul Azmi prophets Nuh, Ibrahim, Musa, Isa, and Muhammad through Roman Jakobson’s theory of language functions. The study is significant because khithabi verses represent explicit communicative interactions in the Qur’an, where prophetic messages are delivered to particular audiences through context-bound discourse. This study aims to identify the configuration of language functions, determine dominant communicative patterns, and explain variations across prophetic contexts. Using a qualitative descriptive design based on textual and discourse analysis, the study analyzes 645 khithabi verses selected from a broader corpus of 1,412 narrative verses. Each unit is classified according to Jakobson’s six functions: referential, emotive, conative, phatic, metalinguistic, and poetic. The findings show that the referential function is dominant overall, appearing in 336 verses (52.09%), followed by the conative function in 250 verses (38.76%), metalinguistic in 31 verses (4.81%), emotive in 20 verses (3.10%), phatic in 5 verses (0.78%), and poetic in 3 verses (0.47%). Cross-prophetic comparison reveals distinctive communicative typologies: Nuh is persuasive-corrective, Ibrahim argumentative-dialogic, Musa confrontational-liberative, Isa informative-affective, and Muhammad normative-universal. The study contributes to Qur’anic linguistics by integrating functional linguistic analysis with Qur’anic discourse and by proposing a model of adaptive prophetic communication.
Thonthowi et al. (Mon,) studied this question.